Recent Comments

1. over 5 years ago on Over the Hedge

   You are right to blame science. Science told us for years that mercury, in any amount, is harmful. The EPA regulated mercury out of most products. CFC bulbs are labeled with warnings about mercury. Then parents find out vaccines are delivered in a Thimerasol solution, which contains (trace amounts) of mercury. Sure, you can explain LD50 amounts and such to a scientist, but to some parents who are legitimately weighing the cost/benefit of vaccination, the very slight chance of severe harm from the vaccination now outweighs the risk of the diseases that had been “eradicated”. We decided to go ahead and vaccinate our kids, but not until they were 5 years old – no infant vaccinations. I had mumps, chicken pox, and hong kong flu as a kid and turned out fine, so it’s not as if these are high mortality diseases. I did recently get a shingles vaccination since I did have chicken pox, but I never get a flu shot since I am pretty healthy and get sick on average only once per year (even though I am supposed to have a compromised immune system from chemo).Forcing parents to vaccinate is the wrong approach. Better education is the right approach. Take a little time to understand the parents concerns, and counter them with facts.

2. over 7 years ago on Over the Hedge

   I wish comic writers could figure out that politics isn’t funny. If Doonesbury can’t make it funny, then no one can. But, here in the real world in South Dakota where the US Drought Monitor says we’re in a D2 Severe Drought, we’re getting a half inch of rain every 5 days or so, and temps are in the high 70’s in the afternoon. Looks like record corn and soybean crops, for the 4th time in the last 6 years. So even if it is getting warmer, it looks like it makes MORE food, not less. 40 years ago, a 40 bushel/acre corn crop here would be considered good. I am now expecting 150 bushels/acre this year, and that would only be my 4th best crop. Don’t let the alarmists scare you with their constant doomsday talk. Life goes on.

3. over 7 years ago on On A Claire Day

   Yep. $10 trillion later and what do we have to show for it? ISIS, spoiled brats rioting on campus, and $1300/mo. health insurance bills.

4. about 11 years ago on Minimum Security

   @Redkaycei – Actually, I find it is liberals/progressives that are afraid of the future. Between climate scare tactics and overpopulation/running out of food or water, there’s always some emergency that only the wise government can save us from. What BS. Free Enterprise practiced by free people will innovate out of any so-called crisis. Case in point – I have a copy of a full page ad taken out by an environmental group warning that we are running out of energy and destroying the planet by going after ever-harder to get resources. What were they talking about? WOOD! We were burning up the western US forests to power steam locomotives. But, when that got too expensive, we found this amazing stuff called coal. The ad was from a paper in the 1870’s. Now of course, we switched to diesel because it was more efficient than coal. Soon the railroads will switch again to natural gas – prototype locomotives are already running for BNSF and Union Pacific. Capitalism is the most efficient allocator of scarce resources – and almost everything is scare by definition (if it has a price, that price is what rations it. Air has no price (so far), so it is not scarce). Stephanie’s problem is that unskilled labor is plentiful, therefore low price.

5. about 11 years ago on Minimum Security

   It’s worse than you think, Stephanie. Workers are also competing with machines – even if the workers strike and win higher wages, that will just cause some entrepreneur to invent a machine that can do the job for less. Manual labor will always be in surplus. If you want them to have a better life, tell them to have fewer kids and makes them stay in school and learn a marketable skill. Unskilled labor will always pay too little, even under communism!